Laure Junot, duchess d’Abrantès, (born Nov. 6, 1784, Montpellier, France—died June 7, 1838, Paris) French author of a volume of famous memoirs.

Laure Junot, detail of a lithograph by Thierry Frères, after a painting by Jules Boilly, 1836

Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

After her father died in 1795, Laure lived with her mother, Madame Permon, who established a distinguished Parisian salon that was frequented by Napoleon Bonaparte. It was Napoleon who arranged the marriage in 1800 between Laure and his aide-de-camp Andoche Junot. Laure accompanied her husband to Portugal, where he was ambassador (1804–05). The marriage was unhappy, and Laure had affairs with Prince Metternich, Austrian ambassador to Paris (1806–09), and, later, with a Royalist aristocrat named Maurice de Balincourt. Always generous to the Junots, Napoleon became annoyed with Laure’s entertaining former émigrés and ordered her to leave Paris after her husband’s death (1813). Though she persuaded the minister of police to let her return, the Second Restoration (1815) saw the final collapse of her fortunes. After many years in Rome, she returned to Paris, where she completed her Mémoires sur Napoléon, la Révolution, le Consulat, l’Empire et la Restauration, 8 vol. (1831–35). Noted as a vehicle of caustic wit and extravagance, her memoirs, which are often incorrect, are also often malicious, especially with regard to Napoleon.

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